Man says he informed on Muslims for FBI

Craig Monteilh, 46, claims he worked as an FBI informant, targeting mosques in Orange County to weed out terrorism suspects. JOSHUA SUDOCK, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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An OC JTTF (Orange County Joint Terrorism Task Force) coin Monteilh says he was presented by his FBI handler for a successful operation. KEN STEINHARDT, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Radio media get in close for good audio of Monteilh during a press conference he called at his home in Irvine Thursday. JOSHUA SUDOCK, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Craig Monteilh keeps his hands neatly clasped in his lap during a press conference in the Irvine man's living room. JOSHUA SUDOCK, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Monteilh talks with Register reporter Salvador Hernandez at his home in Irvine, Thursday morning. KEN STEINHARDT, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Monteilh alleges he is the informant in question in a recent case where Ahmoudullah Niazi, of Tustin, who is charged with several immigration charges and allegedly covered up ties to terrorist organizations. KEN STEINHARDT, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Radio media get in close for good audio during a press conference at his home. JOSHUA SUDOCK, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Craig Monteilh, a 46-year-old man from Irvine, says he fears for his safety and the safety of his family now that members of the local Islamic community are aware that he worked as an FBI informant, targeting Orange County mosques, Muslims and Islamic centers to weed out terrorism suspects. JOSHUA SUDOCK, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Craig Monteilh works on his laptop. KEN STEINHARDT, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

IRVINE - For more than a year, Craig Monteilh pretended to be someone he wasn't. He donned Muslim garb, told those around him he was embracing Islam and investigated the people who considered him a friend, he said.

From July 2006 to October 2007, his job was to infiltrate the Muslim community in Orange County and weed out any possible terrorist threats, he said in an interview Thursday.

The Irvine man - a convicted con artist - said he infiltrated local mosques under the persona of Farouk al-Aziz and recorded conversations about blowing up buildings and setting off explosives inside busy shopping centers. He said he did so under the guidance of agents from the FBI.

Several of the conversations he said he recorded were with Ahmadullah Sais Niazi, a Tustin man who was arrested Friday on several immigration-fraud charges. According to a federal indictment, Niazi lied in his application for citizenship and a U.S. passport by hiding links to terrorist organizations and suspects, including a brother-in-law suspected of being Osama bin Laden's security coordinator.

Monteilh, 46, has been convicted of fraud and grand theft and recently served a prison sentence for conning two women out of more than $157,000. The Islamic Center of Irvine received a restraining order against him in 2007 after members complained that he was asking people "to join him in a terrorist plot," according to court documents.

Monteilh said he came forward as an informant in an effort to clear his name and have the restraining order lifted. He filed court documents this week in which he claimed that he had been working for the Orange County Joint Terrorism Task Force.

FBI officials said they could neither confirm nor deny whether Monteilh worked as an informant for the agency. But a federal agent's testimony during a recent hearing in Niazi's case appears to support Monteilh's claims.

Testifying at a bail hearing, Special Agent Thomas J. Ropel III said Niazi had been secretly recorded by an informant talking about plans to blow up empty buildings and taking up jihad, or holy war. Ropel refused to identify the informant in court but said it was the same man who had been reported to the FBI by Niazi and the Council on American-Islamic Relations as harboring violent views in June 2007.

Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the greater Los Angeles chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said Monteilh was the man known at the Islamic Center as Farouk, who had raised suspicions with his talk of jihad.

"I have no doubt," Ayloush said. "There's no doubt it's the same guy."

Monteilh said he began to work as an informant after he was released from state prison in 2003 after a 16-month sentence for forgery. He said officers from the Westminster Police Department recruited him to work as a narcotics informant because of his prison connections with white-supremacist groups. FBI agents later approached him about working in counterterrorism, he said.

"They said, 'We want to perfect and train you to infiltrate the Islamic community,' " Monteilh said. In the year he worked in the Muslim community, Monteilh said he recruited 47 informants from Orange County.

For his work, he was paid $6,000 to $11,200 a month, he said.

He started by attending the Islamic Center of Irvine and telling leaders there he was an immigrant of French and Syrian descent who wanted to embrace Islam. In reality, Monteilh said he is a light-skinned African American and attends Cavalry Chapel in Costa Mesa, a nondenominational Christian church.

Agents told him to ease his transition into Islam or he would risk calling attention to himself. He initially attended mosque wearing Western clothing, but when people traveled to Egypt and the Middle East, they would return with Muslim garb for him, which he began to wear.

The operation began to expand, he said, but when he began to cultivate a close relationship with Ahmadullah Niazi, the 34-year-old Tustin man became the focus of the investigation.

Monteilh and Niazi talked on the phone daily, and Monteilh said Niazi sent him speeches and Web sites about jihad. Monteilh also said they talked about a possible "operation" in May 2007, such as blowing up an empty building or setting off a pipe bomb in a shopping center.

But, according to Monteilh, members of the mosque began to suspect they were being monitored and sought the restraining order that prohibits him from getting within 100 yards of the center. In their court filings, members of the Islamic Center said Monteilh was "making references to engaging in 'jihad' " and "organizing terrorist plots."

One of the men who testified against him was Niazi, the man now being held in lieu of $500,000 bail on immigration charges. Niazi is not accused of terrorism.

Monteilh said he was promised that he would be placed under the witness-protection program and awarded $100,000 at the end of his work as an informant. He also said federal agents told him they would clear his record of a 2008 grand-theft conviction - which, he said, was related to work he was doing as a narcotics informant.

He said the FBI reneged on its agreement. But, he said, he doesn't regret the work he has done.

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